


lost in translation

by quietmoon



Series: ab aeterno [1]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/M, Samurai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2020-06-30 13:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19854292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmoon/pseuds/quietmoon
Summary: For the last time (this time), goodbye.





	lost in translation

**Author's Note:**

> _cross-posted from[ff.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11754712/1/lost-in-translation)_
> 
> Part of a reincarnation au I'll never write, set during the final samurai war (Battle of Shiroyama). Excerpt from [25 Lives by Tongari](http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/mirror/25-lives/).

_when we meet as adults, you're always much more discerning.  
i don't blame you. yet, always, you **forgive** me—_

[ Kagashima Prefecture ; _Kyūshū, Japan_ ]

**1877**

They twirl as they fall. _Beautiful_ , Gray finds himself thinking, _even as they die._ Through the air on the light breeze, carried in a quiet dance until the reach the ground, the pink flower petals flutter around the garden and light up the air with a lovely sweetness.

He keeps himself from reaching out to touch one caught in her hair. She looks out across the water, her back to him. You'd look at her and think she was admiring the garden; and admirable it is, with rich greens and delicate reds and the deep reflected blue of the koi pond as a centre.

But of course, she is not.

Her hand is tense on the stone of the shrine, though, and her back is straight. Her shoulders are hunched. He wants to step out, wants to hold her, protect her, even just take a little of that weight from her shoulders and onto his — but he knows she won't let him. Out of a sea of impossibilities, it is the only one that he cannot bring himself to resent. He smiles softly; because the way his heart breaks, this pain, this injustice, is all too— _far too_ —familiar. It has, after all, been his faithful friend these many years.

When she finally speaks, it is in a voice as reserved as she can manage. Just one word. "When?"

"I leave tonight," he answers. He isn't as good as she is at masking the pain and he can hear it himself — hear the bitterness, the hopeless anger, the exasperated amusement at the irony of it all. "I leave tonight," he says again.

 _You will not come back_ , she doesn't say, but he can hear it in her silence, he can read it in the soft line of her neck as her head lowers in understanding. _I won't see you again._

 _No,_ he agrees silently. _Not in this lifetime._

She nods, an act of finality, and the flower petal falls from her hair. He stares as it flutters to the ground, seemingly unaware even of its own death; happy just to, in that moment, fly. _Beautiful_ , Gray finds himself thinking, _even at the end_.

_—as if you understand what's going on and you're making up for_  
all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist  
and the ones where we, _**just barely,** _ _never meet._


End file.
